Nachito Herrera sits at the piano in the livingroom of his home…Herrera, a former child prodigy and White Bear Lake resident from Cuba will tour the USA with the National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba. (Pioneer Press: John Doman)

There he stood on the stage in the crowded Havana concert hall, dressed in a too-large, dark pinstriped suit, all 12 years of him, a child prodigy who did not know he was one, just that he played the classical piano as well as anyone of any age.

And so Ignacio “Nachito” Herrera, the proud but humble boy from Cuba’s architecturally rich Artemisa province, walked over to the Steinway, sat down and for the next 40 minutes that evening in 1978 impeccably performed Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 2 with the lauded National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba.

Piece of cake then for the now 46-year-old internationally known White Bear Lake resident and married father of two.

“When you are a child, you are innocent, and you really don’t understand the impact of what you are doing,” Herrera said last week. “But now? I can honestly say I’m nervous, I’m thinking that I’m not mentally prepared for it.”

The reason for Herrera’s very modest apprehension is that life has somewhat come full circle. Next month, Herrera will perform for the first time in 34 years with the same Cuban orchestra as part of the 85-member ensemble’s first-ever U.S. tour since its formation shortly after the Cuban revolution in 1959.

Herrera’s tale is a common one told by immigrants who find success in their adopted homes. And guess what? This piano virtuoso, one who could live and thrive wherever he wants in this world — Paris, New York, London, Singapore — is as happy and content here in the Great White North as a swaying palm tree basking in the warm Cuban sun.

“I love Minnesota,” said Herrera, who teaches at the MacPhail Center for Music in Minneapolis and was a recipient this year of the American Heritage Award from the American Immigration Council. “I love New York … I love San Francisco. But we embrace Midwestern roots that are like us — the family getting together on weekends, going to church on Sundays.”

“Our priority was and is our children,” added Aurora, his wife, who thought it strange that Minnesotans all painted their rooftops white when she first landed here in January 2003.

“We wanted a place with good schools, low crime and drugs. We’ve carved a path here.”

Nachito Herrera learned from classical and Cuban music keyboard masters such as Ruben Gonzalez, Jorge Gomez Labrana and Frank Fernandez, among others. He was musical director of the famed Tropicana Club in Havana while in his 20s and later lead pianist and arranger for Cubanismo, an award-wining Afro-Cuban music band that toured here in the late 1990s.

Herrera received a special artist-in-residence visa in 2001 as music director for “Los Rumbaleros,” a theatrical production about a family living on St. Paul’s West Side. His family planned to reunite with him. They had a scheduled appointment to obtain their American visas on Sept. 11, 2001.

“Everything got suspended that day, and we waited another year before we were allowed to come,” Aurora said.

Given the “dry-foot, wet-foot” policy status that favors Cuban immigrants who come here, Herrera was able to obtain a green card and ultimately permanent residence. He and his family became U.S. citizens in recent years.

A longtime fixture at the Dakota Jazz Club, Herrera has wowed audiences with his artistry.

“Hotter than the burning tip of a contraband Cuban cigar … jaw-droppingly good,” a local music critic penned after one of Herrera’s performances.

Herrera recently kick-started the Nachito Herrera Foundation, which seeks to help underprivileged children in the Twin Cities receive instruction if not music scholarships. The key mover for the effort was his son, David Jesus, 18, who is pursuing a career in marketing. The Herreras also have a daughter, Mirdalys, 23, a competent singer, aspiring lawyer and member of the Minnesota Army National Guard.

Although Herrera believes not enough is being done to link more kids to playing music, he is “floored” by the musical talents he has seen here, particularly with the Minnesota Youth Symphonies.

He counts as a close friend Manny Laureano. The transplanted New Yorker of Puerto Rican descent who directs the youth symphonies is also principal trumpet for the Minnesota Orchestra.

“He’s doing a great job with the young people, and the Minnesota Orchestra — they are so good that I would put them, in my opinion, as among the top two or three in the world,” Herrera said. “I think we take for granted the wealth of music that we have in this state.”

He also thinks highly of the globetrotting Cuban orchestra, one reason why he and his wife labored in the past two years to get it to perform in the U.S. after President Barack Obama loosened artistic visa restrictions imposed by the previous administration.

The orchestra, alas, won’t perform here because of logistics and efforts that fell through. It opens Oct. 16 in Kansas City and will play in Iowa, Illinois, the Carolinas, New York, Virginia and West Palm Beach, Fla., among other locales. But it won’t play in Miami because of strong anti-Castro opposition from the exiled Cuban community there.

Herrera says he respects all views on the Cuban issue, but this is not the time for it.

“Other people may, but I don’t mix culture with politics,” he said. “Music is the bridge that links us all.”

His wife is less restrained in her response.

“The radio stations in Miami won’t play his music because of this, and I think that’s wrong and stupid,” said Aurora, a lawyer and music producer. “It was never our intention to turn this tour into a political statement. China has a communist system, yet it doesn’t interfere with trade and cultural exchanges here. Why China and not Cuba? There’s no reason for it.”

Herrera was scheduled to fly to Havana this weekend to begin rehearsing for the 25-concert tour. Along with the orchestra, he will perform George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and “Cuban Overture,” Beethoven’s “Fifth Symphony” and “Guaguanco” by Cuban composer-conductor Guido Lopez-Gavilan.

“There are still some musicians in the orchestra who remember me from that day,” Herrera said. “I feel overjoyed.”

Ruben Rosario can be reached at 651-228-5454 or rrosario@ pioneerpress.com. Follow him on twitter at @nycrican.

From smoking crack in a Harlem drug den for a front-page exposé to covering the deaths of 86 people in a Bronx social club fire, Rubén Rosario spent 11 years as a writer for the New York Daily News before joining the Pioneer Press in 1991 as special correspondent and city editor. He launched his award-winning column in 1997. He is by far the loudest writer in the newsroom over the phone.

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